10 Best Apps for Foodies

by Jennifer Jeanne Patterson • Guest Writer

For Home Cooks

You'll soon be able to break your Food Network addiction with “Baking with Dorie,” an app by celebrity baker Dorie Greenspan. With its technique videos, you’ll feel as if she’s in your kitchen teaching you how to make her flaky pie crust. And with her ability to write disarmingly simple recipes, you’ll actually succeed.

Bonus Feature: It’s all desserts. But with its food photography, will you be able to save the best course for last?

For Eating Locally

The easiest way to know what’s in your food (and not in it, like icky pesticides) is to eat local and in season, when foods are at their best, most abundant--and therefore least expensive. Locavore pinpoints farms and farmers’ markets based on your current location, and recommends what should be on your plate now.

Bonus Feature: Recipes to help you plan an in-season menu. You’ll feel one with the earth.

For Buying Fresh Fruits and Vegetables

Can’t remember the rules for telling if a peach is ripe? No surprise: Every fruit ripens differently. Some ripen on the tree, others off it; some you pick when purple, others when green. Harvest puts that information at your fingertips. It’ll instruct you how to squeeze and smell your produce, as well as how to store it, so you’re not left with a slimy zucchini in your refrigerator two days later. Think of the time you’ll save not having to swat fruit flies.

Bonus Feature: Harvest displays a pesticide level so you can decide whether or not you should shell out the cash for organic.

For Allergy-Free Cooking

Eliminating gluten from your diet or dealing with food allergies? Cook IT Allergy Free allows you to swap out ingredients your stomach literally can’t handle so you can still make your favorite recipes, no math required.

Bonus Feature: Save your recipes to your Grocery List to pick up substitutions for your allergens while walking through the store. Better yet, shoot off your list as an email to your significant other. You’ve got enough on your plate.

For Wine Pairing

No need to stress out in a wine shop before your dinner party. Pair It! will give you the perfect wine to swill for each course by matching flavors or pairing opposites, like sweet wine with spicy food. Feeling wild? Try Pair It!’s swirl feature for a random pairing. Crazy, huh?

Bonus Feature: It displays phonetic spellings so you sound like you know what you’re talking about.

For Cheese Connoisseurs

Host a wine and cheese party but let Fromage do the work. This app sorts over 750 cheeses by region, milk type and texture, plus recommends complementary wines. Use its historical descriptions to impress your guests with your knowledge, and its photo journal to record which cheeses truly stink.

Bonus Feature: With its share feature, you can email your friends descriptions of their favorite cheeses from your night.

For Staying Connected

Stay connected to your friends through your love of food. Use Instagram to document your food discoveries, like that lamb boulangere. Apply one of its filters to give your photo a vintage look and voila--you’ve got your friends’ mouths watering.

For Restaurant Recommendations and Reservations

Traveling in a new city? Don’t waste your money on a restaurant that lets you pick your own hardened dessert off a tray. With Zagat’s GPS feature, you can scope out over 30,000 restaurant rankings and reviews based on your current location.

For Shopping

Still lusting after that KitchenAid stand mixer you registered for but didn’t get as a wedding gift? TheFind will flip through inviting catalogues, like Sur La Table and Williams-Sonoma, and display where you can buy it cheapest.

Bonus Feature: No need to clip coupons. TheFind scans barcodes and lists prices from the Web and nearby stores.